Facebook said Wednesday that it will no longer support Facebook Credits, a virtual currency specific to the social network, as of September 12, 2013. Developers, instead, will need to migrate their applications to local currency payments using the company's just-released API.

The complete payments switch, a year in the making, is meant to help developers better price their virtual goods for international markets, as well as simplify the purchase process for buyers.

Related posts

"Local currency payments give developers much more control over their pricing and payments," software engineer Yongyan Liú wrote in a blog post. With the local currency payments API, developers can set prices for in-game items by market, price items dynamically, and speed up in-app transactions, he said.

Facebook Credits were introduced in 2009 and became the de facto payments system for games running on the social network. The model, however, proved overly complex for app makers who wanted pricing flexibility or already offered their own in-game currencies.